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With more than 140 degrees to choose from, UA Little Rock offers its students the opportunity to learn from top-ranked faculty and provides invaluable internship opportunities in several in-demand career fields.

About Faculty Excellence

Dr. David Mastin

APRIL 8, 2013

Encouraging Quality Sleep for Productivity

If Dr. David Mastin had his way, all his students would practice better hygiene. Sleep hygiene, that is.

The Sleep Hygiene Index – a clinical instrument developed by Dr. Mastin that helps determine whether a person will face the day feeling refreshed or rundown – is now the standard in the field of psychology. The index is so useful in determining the effect of habitual behavior on a person’s sleep that it often predicts what kind of grade a student will receive.

In fact, the index has enormous potential to not only add to the current body of scientific knowledge, but also to improve the health and well-being of millions of people, according to Associate Professor of Psychology Robert F. Corwyn. “Sleep deprivation is a worldwide health, safety, and productivity concern that attracts substantial research funding and media attention,” said Dr. Corwyn. “The index and its success is a testament to Dr. Mastin’s creativity and penchant for asking good questions.”

Since his research was published in 2006 in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Dr. Mastin’s work have been cited in numerous scholarly and popular journals, including the 2009 Time magazine article, “Larks and Owls: How Sleep Habits Affect Grades.”

Inquiries continue to pour in from across the globe as the index has achieved national and international notoriety, setting a record for the number of languages into which the work has been translated. Whether India or Italy, Korea or Mexico, Dr. Mastin’s worldwide reach stems from a fundamental truth: no matter where on the planet we live, we function better by day if we get quality sleep each night.

Dr. Mastin’s instrument has been provided to NASA and the Environmental Conservation Industry and, more recently, the Sleep Hygiene Index is being translated into Formosan Mandarin for use in China and Taiwan with plans also for translation into Spanish. This year the index was added to a set of assessment tools offered to clinicians and researchers by the Scandinavian Company CheckWare, internationally renowned for their comprehensive research.

Dr. Mastin has a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi, an M.S. degree in applied psychology from Jacksonville State University, and a B.S. degree in psychology from the University of Alabama.